Wounds of Chaos
by Shadsie
Summary: Set in Uprising, spoilers for Chapter 18 and beyond. Wars leave wounds that are slow to heal. For three years Pit was, quite literally, not himself. After the end of the war, not all humans were cheering, nor were they forgetful. Just because the criminal was innocent does not mean that the damage was undone or forgiven.


**Disclaimer and Notes:** Kid Icarus belongs to Nintendo. No profit is being sought. First foray into the fandom for me, though not my first time writing for Pit. I "discovered" Kid Icarus: Uprising" when I was doing research for a Super Smash Brothers fanfic of mine. In looking up stuff about it, I thought "I just have to get this game," so I did.

I tried looking up the little girl that appears briefly in the game in Chapter 18 and, from what I've seen, she has no name and no extra-materials backstory, so I felt free. (I suppose she _could_ be the girl Hades was talking about yanking around earlier in the game, but I consider him an unreliable storyteller). For geek-bonus, see if you get the few small references to specific anime-series. One of them is semi-obscure.

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**WOUNDS OF CHAOS**

The days of peace were long and frankly, were becoming just a little bit boring. Pit walked along the path leading through the hills to a village called Hikari-Town. He did not visit the surface-world often outside of battle, but he'd grown quite curious about the village of Hikari. It was a new town, something recently-built sometime after the Great War.

There was a rumor that the bakers in this town were masters of the craft to such a degree that their pastries could rival anything created by the gods. The taste of the "ring cakes" from one shop was supposedly better than ambrosia (though not with any magical effects). As creative as humans could be, Pit doubted that they could create anything that would rival Palutena's cakes. She may have had her troubles with vegetables but the sweets she dropped his way were simply... well, divine.

Since the youthful angel thought with his stomach much of the time, he'd decided to pay this town a visit to investigate the legend. The ring cakes were supposedly made in something called a "halo mold" put into the fire of a brick-oven. The resulting cakes were shaped like donuts, but had a spongy texture and were flavored slightly by the smoke. Pit knew that he was to look for a man named "Washi," who ran that bakery.

The angel entered the gate of Hikari and marveled. None of the buildings were very tall, but what had been built was quite impressive. It was said that Hikari had sprung up almost "overnight," in that it was one of the villages that had been built by the people that remained from another village that had been destroyed during the recent all-out cosmic war between Skyworld, the Underworld, the Forces of Nature and the Aurum.

As he walked into the town plaza, Pit noticed that he was being stared at. He was not only being stared at, but people seemed to have stopped all their activities specifically to stare at him. The only creature in the street that was not staring ominously was a dog that came up to him, sniffed at his feet and proceeded to sit down in front of him and wag its tail. Boy, did that dog look familiar…

It dawned on Pit that most humans were not used to seeing people with wings. He'd forgotten that he wasn't in one of the few human-populated places that he'd visited before. The people here were probably in awe that one of their guardians had chosen to visit them.

Pit struck a pose and announced to the people; "No need to be alarmed! I, Pit, servant of the Goddess Palutena am merely here on a shopping trip! Just resume your normal lives…"

The people were glaring at him. He spied a thin old woman, tan like leather, sitting at an open shop-stall window, counting money in a set of scales. She gave him the most evil – yet painful look he'd ever seen in human eyes as she set coins upon one side of the scales to balance them.

Chink. Chink.

"Gramma, what's goin' on?" a child's voice asked from behind the counter. A little girl struggled to climb up on it enough to see over the lip. "Wow!" she gasped.

"You stay here with Granny," the old woman ordered.

The dog barked, as if asking to be petted. Pit began to bend down to do just that, but the way everyone was staring unnerved him.

"Don't worry about anything!" he assured. "I'm carrying a divine weapon, but that's only standard procedure. I haven't seen any Underworld troops anywhere around here! I only came here to try out some cake! Honest!"

"You've got some gall!" a burly man in the crowd shouted. He was followed up by murmurs of agreement by the rest of the crowd.

"Have you come back to finish the job?" some random woman shouted?

The woman at the scales continued to calmly count her coins.

Chink. Chink.

"Finish the job?" Pit asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Of slaughtering us as sheep for your goddess' altar," the old woman at the scales said calmly, with a creaky voice.

"What? I would never! Lady Palutena would never!"

"Forgetful, are we?" The old woman continued.

"Why are you even bothering to talk to the buzzard, Libra?" another man in the crowd growled. He'd pulled a dagger from his belt. "Ain't a one of us will be able to take him, but if we come in together we can avenge our families and friends!"

"I'm just here to try some cake!" Pit cried. "Why would you people want to attack an angel?" He held his hands up. His eyes were wide in disbelief. Even his wings were twitching, shaking loose a few feathers that were ready to molt.

"We are what remains of the city of July," Libra creaked out, "Don't you remember July? You and your centurions destroyed it personally. It was one of the last cities to fall after the three years of destruction your goddess rained down upon us. There are some who say she has her senses back, but as for us, we stopped praying to her long ago. As for you… We know the heavens are not to be trusted. I watched you kill my husband and my son. They both put up a brave fight, taking down your goons and reaching you personally. My little granddaughter and I were able to escape because of their sacrifice."

"You murdered my brother!" Someone shouted from the crowd.

"My wife didn't deserve that arrow through her heart!" someone else shouted.

"My best friend was cut down by one of your centurions!"

"Our homes were burned! Our crops were razed!"

Chink. Chink.

"You can hear the complaints of our city," Libra explained. "We had to start all over again and those that we lost are not coming back to us."

The dog barked again – its pleas for attention a happy sound creating a dissonance in the tense atmosphere.

The dog. A pale brown and white dog. Small, light, friendly and inquisitive. Pit knew this dog – he'd _been_ this dog… in a way. All salivating and smelling out meat-scraps, its canine desires taking over his mind…

The little girl peeked out from behind Libra's counter. Pit suddenly recognized her, as well. He'd been her for a brief time. She looked like she'd grown a bit and was in good health, but she was still small and chubby.

The smell of smoke from burning hay and wood curled around his memory. Time had not existed for him between watching Pyrrhon and the Aurum take their leave and waking up with his consciousness trapped in a magical ring. Pit had just awakened, had found himself "body-surfing" into anyone who would take him close to the ruins of the city he'd been randomly left outside of. He eventually found his way to good ol' Magnus, who'd explained the horrifying truth to him.

Palutena had lost her mind and Pit had lost his body. He had to fight to get both back. In the meantime some…thing… had been using his form to create wrack and ruin for innocent humans. Yes… didn't Magnus make mention of "people his body had killed?"

He'd committed wanton murder without even being there to do it!

"We have not forgotten our city and our fate, even if you have, angel," Libra said, giving him a hawk-eyed glare.

"But…but!" Pit tried to explain, "That wasn't me! Didn't you hear? That was an agent of chaos controlling me and Lady Palu-"

The man who'd had the dagger out lunged for him and he dodged, hitting the man in the back of the head with the flat-side of his bow, sending the man careening to the ground. The other townspeople rushed in, throwing punches, throwing rocks, grabbing sticks.

One man had a sword. Pit ducked, nearly losing his head to the old soldier, one of the few men in guardian-armor this place seemed to have. Most of his attackers were ordinary farmers and merchants. Farmers… the angel found himself dodging one pitchfork and then slicing the head off another. He wheeled and danced and couldn't find a way out. Even if he could fly away at will, he wouldn't be able to. A man grabbed one of his legs. A woman swiped his right wing and tore out a clump-full of feathers. That was sharply painful, even more painful than the small stones some of the older children of the village (who were keeping their distance) were pelting him with.

Pit fought the villagers off as best he could without landing any lethal blows. He didn't want to hurt these people. They weren't monsters – they were people he was sworn to protect! He remembered, briefly, how much it had hurt to fight his own centurions in the lost city. Pit hated to see his men hurt, even as they were duty-bound and could be resurrected without cease. It had felt somehow "more right" that he was fighting them using the body of Magnus rather than his own for some reason.

Fighting humans was decidedly different. He didn't have to hold back in fighting his own soldiers. Dying sucked even if one could be brought back with ease, but humans did not have easy regenerative abilities, nor were they directly under Lady Palutena's jurisdiction for that sort of thing. Any humans that died would become the property of the reapers, the Underworld, Limbo, the reincarnation-cycle…

…Never to come back, their current lives lost forever.

And as far as wounds and pain went, human bodies were horrifically fragile. Pit was already landing blows that were making his most vicious attackers bleed just to get them off of him.

"Please! Just listen to me!" he yelped as someone else grabbed several flight-feathers from his left wing and yanked them out without mercy. Someone else kicked him and sent him to his knees. Pit felt pretty weak and pathetic right now, he was being bested way too easily, but this was only because he was holding back. He looked to the heavens, hoping that Lady Palutena would extract him from this impossible situation.

Instead, he got a tackle-hug from a little girl.

"Leave him alone!" the child cried.

"Anna, you get away from that monster right now!" Libra demanded, stepping out from behind her stall.

"No!" Anna retorted, "He's not a monster! His voice is like the voice in the ring!"

"The ring?" Pit asked, "You mean, you heard me?"

"Uh, huh. I remember hearing your voice when I put on a ring. You needed to use me and you sounded really confused."

"Just what are you going on, about, Anna?" Libra said, storming up, "Come to Granny."

Anna hugged Pit tighter. "No, I won't let anyone hurt him anymore! He's innocent!"

The villagers crowded around the two, reluctant to hurt a child. Still, it was clear that someone was about to make a move – either to extract Anna from Pit's arms forcibly or to resume the attack, too blinded by the desire for vengeance to care.

"Hey! Leave him alone!" a deep voice with an edge of rebellion sounded. The street rattled beneath the steel crash of an enormous sword.

"Magnus?" said an old man as the crowd collectively turned to look at the open gate of Hikari-Town.

Murmurs went up among the town, some about the "return of a hero," others about a "scoundrel mercenary," but, all in all, the people here seemed to know him.

"Do you idiots have any idea what you're doing?" Magnus demanded. "You're all lucky to be alive!"

Pit stood up and the little girl stood by his legs. "Magnus!" he cried.

"You look a bit beaten up, Angel-Face," Magnus replied. "You need to choose better company."

"I kinda… just came here for the cake."

"Magnus! Why are you defending him?" one of the farmers demanded, thumping the butt of his rusty pitchfork on the ground. "He's a killer! Don't you remember what happened to our town? You were there, defending us – from his troops and his capricious goddess!"

Magnus could see a snarl developing on Pit's face at the words "capricious goddess." He decided that it was not a good look on the angel.

"Listen!" Magnus shouted over the chattering of the crowd. "I've fought alongside the kid before. He obviously does not want to hurt you-"

Someone walked up to the warrior, wiped the blood from his cut brow, flicked it in his general direction and then pointed to an unconscious man splayed out against a market stall. "Doesn't want to hurt us, huh?"

Magnus, wrinkling his brow in frustration, thumped the end of his sword on the ground again like a judge's gavel. "You really are a bunch of manure-for-brains farmers here, aren't you? If that angel had wanted to kill you, you'd all be dead right now! Isn't that right, Pit?"

"Uh…" Pit replied, "I uh… really didn't want to hurt anyone, honest!"

"Aw, look what you let 'em do to ya," Magnus said.

Pit twitched his slightly bloodied wings and straightened his crown. He walked toward Magnus and turned back to the little girl, who was following him. "Go on back to your Granny now," he whispered, "It's okay."

"I can vouch for him," Magnus addressed the crowd. "We fought his possessed body together. The thing that destroyed your lives was nothing but a shell! This kid, he's… well, let's just say that he's a true servant of the Goddess of Light and that he is way too _innocent_ and _naïve _for his own good. He can also kick your ass seven ways if he really wants to."

Pit looked at the ground. "I am very sorry… for what happened," he told the townspeople. "But Magnus is right. During the war… there was a time when I was not in my body and the Chaos Kin did terrible things with it. I can't bring anyone back… and I am sorry."

People glared and murmured. They helped the wounded. Libra hugged her granddaughter close.

"Looks like you did some damage," Magnus mused. "Nothin' too bad. No one's dead – amazingly, not even you."

"They just kind of rushed me. I didn't know what else to do."

"One thing you gotta learn about us humans, Angel-Face – is that we aren't exactly forgiving."

"You helped me."

"Yeah, but I kinda like you. The rest of us… we're all lookin' for someone to blame. You aren't going to heal the wounds of the past with a simple apology."

"I just came here to try the cake…" Pit said forlornly.

"The legendary Washi's?" Magnus asked. "Actually, I was stopping by here for that myself." He clapped Pit on the shoulder, careful of his scrapes and a slightly-defeathered wing. "His place is at the end of town. Come with me. We'll get you some cake. After that, you'd best get back to where you belong."

* * *

**END. **

I hope I didn't screw up too badly with this story. Firsts-for-fandoms are always a bit iffy, even though I've been wasting time writing fanfics for many things for a good, long time. For the reference-watchers… Um… There are little shout-outs to Haibane Renmei and to Trigun for… "angelic" reasons. In fact, if I write any more KI fanfiction, I will probably put HR references in all of them – readers who are familiar with that series know why I'd want to do that.


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